Iraq War Intelligence Chief to Head Army’s Intelligence Center

Defense Secretary Bob Gates took a tour of the armed services’ war colleges last week to deliver the message that the Army, Navy and Air Force need to focus more on institutional support for the two wars that the United States is currently fighting and less on long-desired weapons systems and other hardware that don’t have much applicability in those fights. Check out Noah Shachtman’s reporting on that, since Noah followed Gates on tour like the Pentagon chief was the Grateful Dead. But it looks like at least one service is already implementing the message.

Here’s an announcement of some new general-officer assignments from Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey. It includes this conspicuous move:

I don’t know anything specific about Legere’s Iraq tour, but it’s noteworthy that an Iraq veteran would take over the Army’s premiere intelligence center. There are few people more qualified than chiefs of Iraq-war and Afghanistan-war intelligence to orient the Intelligence Center around the real-life intelligence needs of soldiers at war.